my flight of ideas

I may have OCP. No, I am not talking about Oral Contraceptive Pills! It’s an Obsessive-Compulsive Personality that I harbor.

Take for example yesterday and today. Classes were suspended on both occasions, and today’s cancellation of schoolwork even meant the automatic postponement of an exam on worms and flukes that we should have had.

Am I happy?

Well, yes. In a way. I’m a student too, and I love it when the system of structured education gets paused for a while, allowing its subordinates some rest. And when you come from a course that values sleep like no other commodity on this planet, you take every opportunity you can to sneak a few more hours in your bedtime.

The problem lies not in the availability of these rewards; it is in the price to pay for foiling plans, breaking structured schedules, and deviating from what has been arranged! (Aha, there goes my OCP!)

Our Pharmacodynamics class has as one of its requirements a full-blown mini-thesis/research. In my group’s case, we’re handling one-hundred and twenty-five Swiss mice for animal experimentation. (Animal lovers out there, be informed: we are trained in ethical scientific handling.)

These mice need to be fed daily. Their poop needs to be cleaned out too. Their water has to be replenished or even replaced, in case it gets dirty.

But that’s not the immediate concern. There is a dedicated sub-group of my research team (now that sounds so professional, when we’re really students and not faculty) attending to the animals. What bugs me is the delay in the scheduled experiments.

Not that there’s no more physical time. The deadline’s still around the end of September, and the experiment takes only a week at most. Why am I really concerned?

Because it’s not only Pharma that we’re doing! There’s the regular truckload of exams coming in at least twice a week on average, the other research project in Microbiology (which is also delayed by virtue of the Monsoon rains), and the numerous other requirements set by our preceptors.

Goodness. I must learn to be flexible as regards scheduling. That’s my OCP problem.